Alpha Historica licenses professionally restored, high resolution photography featuring the historic faces and places of the 1800s and early 1900s. Preserving and making available images from the very dawn of photographic processes, we are a quality-driven resource for those who would remind us through various media of the people, ideas, and events of the past that shaped a previous time and continue to be relevant to ours. Our historic archive of imagery helps today's storytellers and reporters to better communicate by augmenting words with photography in reaching audiences that are increasingly visually-oriented.

It is our hope that these images would accompany true and faithful representations of the subjects, whether they be heroes, villains or something in-between. Our collection, when it is fully digitized and available online, will include people who influenced (for good or bad) various spheres of human endeavor, thought and experience. You will find people who shaped kingdoms and cultures through faith, science, art, industry, enslavement, abolition, philosophy, sport, love for God, or lust for power.

While some historical archives, with good reason, preserve digital images of photographs with all the blemishes of aging, fading, spotting, tearing, cracking and pealing of the prints or negatives in their current condition, Alpha Historica employs conservative restoration to more closely represent the original photographer's intent and the original state of the photograph. In other words, while we would attempt to restore an area where a spot or scarring exists over a person's face due to aging of or damage to the print (or negative), we would not seek to remove a birthmark or scar that was actually a feature of the subject's face.

The condition of source photographs, some dating to more than 150 years ago, can vary widely. Some early processes have left us with photos of amazing clarity and rich tonal qualities. Others have been much more seriously affected by time and exposure to elements, especially light. As a result there will be a range in the aesthetic qualities of images within any collection, even with conservative restoration.

In instances where other copies of source material are known to exist, we will reference those images as we are able where judgment calls need to be made in restoration. As these copies (or similars) may have aged or been damaged in different areas of the photo, comparison allows us to make a more solid assessment of the original state of the photograph. In some cases, images in the Alpha Historica collection are the only known (or available) copies in existence. If substantial damage exists in a portion of such a photo, it will be retained in the digital, restored image rather than resorting to a highly interpretive solution.